Latest news with #valuation
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bari Weiss seeks more than $200mn for media start-up The Free Press
Bari Weiss is seeking a valuation of more than $200mn for The Free Press amid talks over the sale of her 'anti-woke' media Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Fast Company
6 hours ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Figma aims for $16 billion valuation as IPO date and stock listing nears
Figma is targeting a valuation of $16.4 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The collaborative design software maker —a rival to platforms like Adobe—plans to sell around 37 million shares priced between $25 and $28 each, which would generate up to $1 billion in proceeds and give the company a valuation between $14.6 billion and $16.4 billion. The targeted share price was disclosed in the company's updated S-1 statement, filed with the SEC on Monday. Figma had previously entered an agreement with Adobe to be acquired in 2022, but regulators nixed that deal. It's unclear when the listing will occur. A report from Bloomberg, citing an anonymous source, said shares are expected to be priced on July 30. Fast Company reached out to Figma for comment. Figma's stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker 'FIG.' It first filed paperwork with its intent to go public earlier this month. The company's filings show a positive trajectory that investors might find enticing. Figma says it has 13 million active users, and that its products are used by 95% of the Fortune 500. Last year, it drove $749 million in revenue, an increase of 48% year-over-year, and its most recent quarterly sales numbers, for the first few months of 2025, were similarly up 46% year-over-year. Figma's forthcoming IPO follows several other tech-focused listings in recent months, including market debuts for Circle and Chime. Figma was named one of Fast Company 's Most Innovative Companies of 2025.
New York Times
8 hours ago
- Business
- New York Times
What are college football programs actually worth? Experts say from $1.65 billion to $0
On Monday, The Athletic put a price tag on every Power 4 college football team if they could be bought and sold like pro franchises, from Texas (almost $2.4 billion) to Houston ($91 million). Today, we're going to consider a related but different question: How much are those programs actually worth? Advertisement That's a topic being researched by a pair of valuation experts, Kevin Kaiser of the University of Pennsylvania and Jacqueline Garner of Georgia Tech. Although their work is ongoing, their initial figures range from more than $1.6 billion (Ohio State) to … $0. The differences in the questions and answers are both significant and relevant, as they explained in a recent conversation. Because professional sports teams are businesses, it's natural to think of them like any other company or investment: The price you pay reflects how much money you think it will make. That, however, is not how the industry works in practice. The billionaires who buy teams view them as trophy assets to show off, like a superyacht or a van Gogh. 'We don't think of these things as investments when the people buying them are buying them for the consumption benefit of telling their friends they just bought a football team,' said Kaiser, an adjunct full professor of finance at Penn's Wharton School of Business. 'In that sense, they're buying it based on how happy they are, and the price they pay is a reflection of happiness, not (cash flow) value.' The disconnect means the prices for pro franchise transactions — like the $6 billion sales of the Washington Commanders and Boston Celtics — are much higher than how much those teams are actually worth on paper. 'We can't back into a value of that,' said Garner, a senior lecturer at Georgia Tech and former financial economist at the other SEC (the Securities and Exchange Commission). 'There's no set of estimates where we can come up with $6 billion with their cash flows. Even if I make really nice assumptions or nice estimates, I can't come up with $6 billion.' The same idea would apply to theoretical transactions of college football teams. Advertisement Even if the cash flow figures mean a program has little to no financial value, a booster with deep enough pockets will want to buy it, anyway, for the joy and bragging rights of owning their beloved team. If (when?) investment companies fully venture into college sports, they can't and won't approach the process the same way billionaires do in the NFL or NBA. 'They don't need a trophy asset,' Garner said. 'In fact, they'll lose their job with trophy assets.' Instead, those firms have a fiduciary duty to pursue deals that make money. That leads to some of the major lingering questions with college sports and private equity: How will outside groups cause cash flows to grow enough to make it worth their investments? Where does the extra money come from? What expenses get cut? Kaiser envisions another likely scenario. What if a private equity firm that wants to make money partners with a booster who wants a trophy asset? The different perspectives would affect everything from the purchase price to the payouts. 'You can kind of imagine that private equity's going to position themselves to maximize their take from the cash flow and leave the other party stuck with the stump that basically isn't going to generate much cash flow, but they're going to have the happiness of saying they own the team,' Kaiser said. When paying players directly became legal on July 1 through the House vs. NCAA lawsuit settlement, schools added an immediate expense of up to $20.5 million. But that's just Year 1; the payments are expected to increase 4 percent annually after that. If you assume investors seek a 10 percent return on buying a team, Garner and Kaiser said the revenue-sharing era hacks almost $350 million off a program's valuation unless it's offset by things like higher ticket prices. The hit is large enough to wipe out any value from some of the Power 4's smallest revenue generators. Advertisement 'The great teams, the big ones who we all know, they'll be relatively fine,' Kaiser said. 'But relatively fine, still, it hurts to lose $350 million in value overnight. This is, in my view, going to generate a long-term consequence that's probably going to separate the football teams from the universities eventually.' It's hard to consider any college football programs as long-term investments without acknowledging the entire landscape. Conference realignment is relatively quiet at the Power 4 level, but the next seismic wave (if it happens) could be not far off as TV deals for the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12 and College Football Playoff all expire between 2030-34. The valuation for programs in that future top tier — whatever it looks like — will depend on how much their cash flow increases through things like ticket sales or TV contracts. 'They're going to be getting a lot more cash flows because of this shift vs. other schools, and then the value gap is going to grow wider,' Garner said. How much wider? 'The difference isn't tiny,' Kaiser said. 'It's astronomical, and so the difference in valuation will be astronomical. If suddenly we have D-I teams that are moved out of that premier league or super league or whatever it's going to be, then they're going to be relegated effectively to D-II schools in some respects.'
Bloomberg
8 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Why People Don't Know How Much Their Art Is Really Worth
Depending on your perspective, the verdict delivered by art services and technology company Winston Artory Group was either very good or very bad. A print that had recently been appraised for $1 million was, the company determined earlier this month, now worth just $300,000—a 70% decline in possible value. These were happy tidings for the insurance company that requested the appraisal, and potentially devastating for the print's owner. 'The insurance company loved it,' says Winston Artory's Co-Executive Chairman Elizabeth von Habsburg. 'The client, maybe not so much.' Art is not easy to value. Unlike soybeans or gold, whose prices might shift but whose inherent qualities are immutable (one soybean is functionally the same as any other soybean), every artwork is different, and therefore must be considered on its own merits. Making valuation even harder is the fact that a huge chunk of the art market's transactions are conducted privately, meaning that variations in price are often impossible to discern unless the world is explicitly told a sale has taken place. (Even then, the exact price is often suspect.)
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
3 Dirt Cheap Stocks to Buy With $500 Right Now
Key Points Alphabet trades at a much cheaper valuation than its Magnificent Seven peers. Realty Income's low valuation is a big driver of its high dividend yield. Energy Transfer trades at one of the lowest valuations in its peer group. 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet › Following a brief dip earlier this year driven by tariff concerns, the S&P 500 has resumed its rally as those fears faded. As a result, we now find the broad market index fetching nearly 22 times its forward earnings. This level is nearing its highest points in the past quarter-century. Even in today's pricier market, several stocks trade at dirt cheap levels. Realty Income (NYSE: O), Energy Transfer (NYSE: ET), and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) stand out as very inexpensive stocks. For anyone with $500 to invest, these stocks make compelling buys right now. An AI bargain Tech titan Alphabet trades at the lowest valuation in the "Magnificent Seven," at around 19 times forward earnings. That's dirt cheap compared with those super growth stocks, which fetch more than 27 times forward earnings. What's holding back Alphabet's valuation? Concerns about AI's impact on its lucrative search business. However, as of the first quarter, AI chatbots have not dented its advertising revenue. Google's search revenue actually climbed 10% in the period, to almost $51 billion. Instead, the company is benefiting from AI. CEO Sundar Pichai stated in the first-quarter earnings release, "Search saw continued strong growth, boosted by the engagement we're seeing with features like AI Overviews, which now has 1.5 billion users per month." The company also recently rolled out its Gemini 2.5 AI model, which "is achieving breakthroughs in performance and is an extraordinary foundation for our future innovation," according to Pichai. The company is also expanding its other businesses, including Google Cloud, YouTube, and others. Alphabet's long-term growth potential makes it look like an especially attractive investment these days. A dirt cheap REIT As a leading real estate investment trust (REIT), Realty Income boasts a diversified portfolio that delivers stable rental income through long-term net leases. Management expects to generate between $4.22 and $4.28 per share of adjusted funds from operations (FFO) this year. With shares of the REIT recently trading below $57, the stock sells for less than 13.5 times its forward earnings. This bargain price is why it offers an attractive dividend yield of more than 5.5%. Rising interest rates have presented some headwinds for REITs such as Realty Income, making it more expensive to borrow money for new investments. Nevertheless, Realty Income continues its steady growth. The company made $1.4 billion worth of acquisitions in the first quarter, enabling it to raise its monthly dividend several times this year. Realty Income projects it will have the financial capacity to invest about $4 billion in portfolio expansion this year. If interest rates fall, which many expect will eventually happen, Realty Income would be able to make even more acquisitions. That would allow it to grow faster, which should boost its valuation. A bottom-of-the-barrel valuation Energy Transfer is one of the country's largest master limited partnerships (MLPs). The midstream company owns a large and diverse portfolio of energy infrastructure assets, such as pipelines, processing plants, storage terminals, and export facilities. Those assets generate stable cash flow, with 90% coming from fee-based structures. Despite its stable cash flow profile, Energy Transfer currently trades at the second-lowest valuation in its peer group. That's a big reasonit boasts a monster 7.5% distribution yield. Other than the fact that the MLP sends investors a Schedule K-1 federal tax form each year, there's no reason for Energy Transfer's discounted valuation. The MLP is in its strongest financial position in history, with a leverage ratio in the lower half of its target range. It also has a low distribution payout ratio, at less than half of its stable cash flow. Meanwhile, it's growing at a solid rate, with a reacceleration expected in 2026 and 2027 as it benefits from a slew of upcoming project completions. The growth from those projects will give it plenty of fuel to continue increasing its high-yielding distribution. Cheap stocks in a pricy market While the S&P 500's valuation is rising to expensive levels, there are still some very reasonably priced stocks out there worth buying. Alphabet, Realty Income, and Energy Transfer currently trade at dirt cheap valuations. With solid growth prospects despite some headwinds, they're great stocks to buy right now for those who have around $500 to invest. Should you invest $1,000 in Alphabet right now? Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,056,790!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Matt DiLallo has positions in Alphabet, Energy Transfer, and Realty Income. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Realty Income. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 3 Dirt Cheap Stocks to Buy With $500 Right Now was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
